To boldly go where no fruit fly has gone before -- into space

Sunday

Mar 16, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 16, 2014 at 12:53 PM

Space, the final frontier, has tugged at Peter Lee since childhood. As a kid, he never missed an episode of Star Trek or a chance to look up at the night sky and dream. Yet it was an earthbound fascination - medicine - that propelled him through college and four post-graduate degrees. Still, Dr. Lee attended Trekkie conventions and kept gazing at the stars.

Dean Narciso, The Columbus Dispatch

Space, the final frontier, has tugged at Peter Lee since childhood.

As a kid, he never missed an episode of Star Trek or a chance to look up at the night sky and dream.

Yet it was an earthbound fascination - medicine - that propelled him through college and four post-graduate degrees. Still, Dr. Lee attended Trekkie conventions and kept gazing at the stars.

Today, the Ohio State University cardiothoracic surgeon's twin passions are represented in a small container aboard a private rocket that was scheduled to launch early this morning from Cape Canaveral, Fla., bound for the International Space Station.

The flies are to orbit Earth 15 times a day for a month. They are simply expected to eat, sleep and reproduce - a lot. In fact, Lee said he expects thousands to return.

And when they do, Lee will study the effects of micro-gravity and space radiation on their tiny fly hearts.

Why flies? For one reason, he can't dissect astronauts' hearts. And according to Lee, about three-fourths of known human disease genes have a recognizable match in the genome of fruit flies. In addition, both human and fly hearts beat about 60 to 100 times per minute.

The analysis "will help guide us for our next experiments and hopefully give us some clues as to what happens to astronauts and how to prevent cardiac problems in humans in the future," Lee said.

In Florida, Lee and a team of scientists will match the space station's temperature, humidity and air quality in a laboratory to have a control group of fruit flies for comparison.

Once the space flies return to Earth on April 17, the team will dissect both sets of flies and use high-speed cameras to record their beating hearts.

"You get an impression of what the heart is doing over time and can insert electrodes to record the equivalent of an electrocardiogram in humans," said Karen Ocorr, an assistant professor at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and a member of the research team. "We're also sending up flies that have known mutations."

The hope is that the answers they find might one day help astronauts explore and even colonize deep space.

"Before you send humans out there, you want to send a bio-sentinel to get good statistical data," said Sharmila Bhattacharya, of NASA's Ames Research Center in California who is also a team member.

"It is very important to get an answer to what is happening to heart function in space before we can embark on these missions."

Lee, 41, said he would love to be part of a future space mission.

"I've always been interested in space," he said. "People kind of grow out of it, but I made it a career."

Lee is prepared, just in case NASA calls. He has a pilot's license, speaks Russian and has even flown in a zero-gravity training plane.

And, of course, he has watched Star Trek and its spinoff series.

"I would beg my father to let me watch the end of (the shows)," he said, adding that he was disappointed about missing a Trekkie convention in Las Vegas last year.

"One of the things I've always wanted to do was to meet all the Star Trek doctors."

Lee has been involved in other NASA missions.

In 1998, he studied the effects of zero-gravity on John Glenn when the astronaut returned to space at age 77. A year later, Lee took part in a month-long Arctic expedition that sought to approximate the environment on Mars.

And 10 years ago, he helped devise a technique to perform CPR in space.

Lee said he would be aboard the rocket today in spirit: "I'm almost jealous of these flies - that they're going into space and I'm not."